Google’s own Paul Eremenko recently participated in an interview at Purdue University, and unsurprisingly, Project Ara came up. Eremenko explained that Ara will follow the Android model of being an open platform, which will lead to a Google Play-style module marketplace that anyone can sell modules through.

By following the Android model, we are creating a free and open platform. So as Android is open source and freely available to anybody, the Ara MDK is free and open and available to anybody, and so anybody can create a module per the specifications of the developer’s kit and put it in the Ara module marketplace, which is analogous to the Google Play store, and sell directly to consumers.Paul EremenkoDirector, Google ATAP

One of the great things about Android is that anyone can create an app and publish it in Google Play, and everyone’s got an equal chance of their app taking off and making them lots of money. While hardware is a bit different than software in that folks may be slightly less likely to take a chance on a random Project Ara module than they would an app, this effort will still enable just about anyone to create an awesome module and have it become popular.

Eremenko’s full interview is available below. The quote begins at the 18:10 mark.